We should require Deity-level victory in all victorymodes at Civ IV before letting anyone work at the State Department. You'll realize quickly that a sharply-worded diplomatic note isn't worth the bytes it's printed on, but a rich trading civilization with a well-provisioned army and navy can usually get its way - and avoid most wars.

I've thought for years that games such as Civ and Europa Univesalis would be fantastic for teaching. I'm a big history buff but EU has taught me a lot about the workings of IR, economics and a generally how a country operates. The problems I do have w games as teaching, though, are twofold. For games of this level of complexity, usually command and control of the game is terrible making the thing unplayable. Then there is presupposition of the programmers. If the programmers decide a certain economic system or military doctrine works, then it works in their world sim even if it's never worked in real life. The game stops being a sim and becomes an exercise in figuring out how the game thinks./rant

While being an avid Civ fan (playing Civ 5 with mods now), I have a theory that Civ (and most other similar games) encourages a belief in socialism and central planning. Almost without exception, these games provide an imaginary total control in the leader, who never really changes over the millennia, who can fully control the development of nation (particularly the religious, economic and military aspects). Want a more productive society? You just need to build the right building. Want better technology? Only the government controls that! Want a religious society? Well, Il Duce chooses what beliefs his country has and how far it expands. You can even purge other faiths without any penalties.

I wonder if a game could be built that more closely reflects reality, where the individuals and the market drives most things and the "ruler" doesn't really rule a whole lot. And would anyone want to play it?

"Can't I just get some invisible hand action in here? Do I really need to tell these notional adults to not use all their food to make beer, and to make clothes before the existing ones wear out? Seriously?"

Civ IV is great! The only problem with it and every other iteration is one more turn = 2 more hours. Next thing you know it's 4 in the morning, and you're saying to yourself, "Ok, 4 hours of sleep is not that bad"

Civ4 got me through my MBA. I played in the back of the room during class every night in about half my classes. In all my education, I've never earned higher grades by doing less work, without learning anything as I did in most business school courses.

We should require Deity-level victory in all victorymodes at Civ IV before letting anyone work at the State Department. You'll realize quickly that a sharply-worded diplomatic note isn't worth the bytes it's printed on, but a rich trading civilization with a well-provisioned army and navy can usually get its way - and avoid most wars.

Coming from the board wargaming area and playing games like Outreach, Dune, Third Reich, and Kingmaker, I found that the strategy level games started in terms a board wargamer could fasten on to like using engineering units to put in roads to increase trade and productivity. Thus computer games were doing the #1 most tedious part of most games: record keeping.

Once you only had to have a high level understanding of what units did, then you could concentrate more on larger scale tasks. With that said having the background of the details mattered a lot, particularly in the Civ type games, as the importance of economic productivity is something you can overlook the first few sessions of it. Also the meticulous use of resources allowed me to uncover some strange quirks in the game mechanism, like all cities are considered ports that ships can go into/out of it. Then if you link cities corner to corner you get a virtual canal. Bringing battleships into the interior of a large continent really does make a difference when you are considering force dispersal.

I've thought for years that games such as Civ and Europa Univesalis would be fantastic for teaching. I'm a big history buff but EU has taught me a lot about the workings of IR, economics and a generally how a country operates. The problems I do have w games as teaching, though, are twofold. For games of this level of complexity, usually command and control of the game is terrible making the thing unplayable. Then there is presupposition of the programmers. If the programmers decide a certain economic system or military doctrine works, then it works in their world sim even if it's never worked in real life. The game stops being a sim and becomes an exercise in figuring out how the game thinks./rant

It's true that these are still sims, and pretty simple sims at that. But they still show that power realities matter. They aren't great at "soft power" and don't let you do much in the way of actual detailed negotiations, but at least you'll appreciate that military power and economic power "matter" in ways you may not if you're a cloistered academic, peace-puss, or process-worshiping bureaucrat.

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